Welcome back, Gamers and Players

today our topic is about a new tendencies in gaming: speaking about Gamification, game industry is a breed camp for gamification solutions so it’s better to keep an eye on what’s happening the door next to us.

Rage Gaming is a term I first time listened on this channel: a Rage Game is a game designed specifically so it cannot be won (or it can be won only through hundreds or thousands of trials). A Rage Game is, in fact, designed to put you into a Game Rage.

Sometimes a Rage Game is simply very, very difficult. Sometimes it is unfair, with traps jerking off without any opportunities to avoid them, or with unbalanced boss (always against you). Sometimes, the game has a very limited amount of time to play (see Half Minute Hero), or countless lives with distant checkpoint (like this one, “I Wanna Be the Guy – Gaiden“).
Try the games above for a few minutes, and you will understand very clearly what I mean with Rage Game, if you have still any doubt.

A Rage Game is definitively funny because you know you will lose. Or (and it is a logical equivalent description) because you know is incredibly hard to win. Do you remember Caillois from this post? Well, the Ilinx is the feature you boost in this kind of game: an Ilinx caused by frustration (specifically, from a frustrated Agon).

This psychological mechanism makes possible to have fun while watching your characters dying, and hugely boost your excitement when you finally win and your Agon mission is fulfilled.

In fact, a Rage Game is exactly like any other game. Simply, the perspective is different: dying hundreds of time is like not die at all.
Try to imagine a Rage Game from a farther point of view: all the usual setting are wrong in quantities, but they are basically the same (defeating monster, avoiding danger, reaching checkpoint, clearing stage, winning bonus). So, when you track down structure of this game they can be related with “normal” games.

Now, how this can be useful to Gamification?

A Rage Game combines the usual game experience in order to get a different pattern. It raises speed and involvement on short-period to their climax, losing them in long-period. This have advantages: you can use low graphics (it’s less important), and interface, level design, playtesting and so on very rough and coarse (but not bad designed: the difficulty here is so high that a misdesigned interface can bother players very quickly: remember that they will use interface a lot in short time).

Definitively they are bad game designed specifically to be “bad”. You can also said “unfair” instead of “bad”. But, anyway, remember that there is a subtle line between not fair and not funny.

Do you need a fast solutions to highly engage someone in a short-term activities? For example, do you want to engage awaiting customers in your mall and/or in your shop?
Probably you should think about test a solutions inspired to high difficulty, fast gameplay and endless continues.

See you on the next post!